http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
DID SHE, or didn't she? Not even Hillary's
hairdresser knows for sure.

Just when we thought there could be nothing new
in another book about Hillary Clinton, we get the latest
profanity from the first lady. One of her old friends in
Arkansas says she once, in a hissy fit of anger and
frustration, yelled at a hapless hireling, "you *%$#% Jew
bastard."

"I wanted to unequivocally state it never
happened," Hillary said on Sunday.

But maybe "it" depends on what your meaning of
"it" is. The plot thickened yesterday. The first husband
interrupted the tension at the Middle East peace talks,
of all places, to say he was there on that Arkansas
election night 26 years ago and he agreed, it didn't
happen. Uh, ummm, on reflection, he said some of it
didn't happen. Maybe part of it did. Could be.

Probably.

"She might have called him a bastard," Mr. Clinton
told a reporter for the New York Daily News,
breaking the rule he established himself that there
would be no conversations between the principals at
Camp David and the reporters looking for something
to write. Of course, when he made the rule he didn't
know Hillary would need a little help with her Senate
campaign.

"I wouldn't rule that out," he said of her use of the
word bastard. "She's never claimed that she was pure
on profanity. But I've never heard her tell a joke with
an ethnic connotation."

It's difficult to imagine Hillary telling a joke about
anything, or getting the punch line straight if she did,
and the president is the greatest living authority on the
sewer mouth of his lady. So maybe he's right. But
we're not talking about a joke. All we have here is the
word of the president and the first lady, and the last
eight years —the last 26 years for those of us who
knew them down in Arkansas — have taught us that
nobody tells a lie with greater ease and conviction than
a Clinton, even a synthetic Clinton.

"OY VEY!"

Hillary and her handlers were thoroughly rattled by
the assertion of one Paul Fray that young Hillary was
looking for someone to blame when Bill Clinton's first
political campaign crashed and burned on an Arkansas
election night in 1974, and he was chosen. Mr. Fray,
as it happens, is not Jewish, but Hillary knew that he,
like she, has Jewish relatives.

Mr. Fray's wife said she was there, and heard it
the way her husband did. A third witness, Neil
McDonald, was standing outside the room and he
heard it, too. If Hillary threw a lamp, as she
sometimes does to emphasize a point in her
discussions with her husband at the White House,
nobody claims to have seen that. Ethnic slurs are not
unknown in Arkansas, but Jewish slurs are rarer than
they might be in, say, a suburb of Chicago. The only
Jews most Arkansawyers know own department
stores, and a public slur like "Jew bastard" would be
remembered.

This could be the pivotal issue in her Senate race.
Some Jews may not mind defamation, as long as the
defamators are liberal Democrats, but others,
calculating that together with similar incidents this one
accurately reflects Hillary's private disdain for Jews,
do mind. Rick Lazio has no chance to win the Jewish
vote, but he might shave a percentage point or two
from Hillary's share of that vote. That could very well
be his margin of victory. The panic in the Clinton
camp over the weekend was real, and justified.

The only evidence of innocence that Hillary could
offer was an ambiguous handwritten letter from Mr.
Fray, written three years ago, apologizing for offenses
the letter does not describe. Hillary is careful not to
describe what Mr. Fray's letter is talking about, either,
but she released the letter in the hopes that Jewish
voters in New York would be thick enough to misread
it as proof of Hillary's innocence.

In his letter, Mr. Fray writes: "I have wronged you.
I ask for your forgiveness because I did say things
against you, and called you names, not only to your
face — but behind your back . . . names that are
unmentionable. At one time in my life, I would say
things without thinking, without factual foundation. . . .
I beg your forgiveness."

An apology, even an apology to a Clinton, no doubt
makes a transgressor feel better, but on its face the
letter says nothing about whether Hillary called Mr.
Fray a "Jew bastard." Mrs. Fray says she heard it.
Neil McDonald says he heard it. Neither has
apologized. Nobody has retracted anything.

Yesterday, on the Fox News Chanel, Fray offered to take a lie detector test to prove his charges are true.

Hillary's defense is the familiar one, that the
Clintons are entitled to the benefit of the usual doubt.
The president sent Joe Lockhart, his press agent, out
to put the White House spin on the story: "Well, I think
. . . the president probably has more experience than
any living human being about how deep in the gutter
some people can go."

07/17/00: Process, not peace, at a Velveeta summit07/12/00: The Texas two-step, a nudge and a wink07/10/00: The Great Mentioner and his busy season07/05/00: No Mexican standoff
in these results07/03/00: Denting a few egos in the U.S. Senate06/28/00: Bureaucracy amok! Punctuation in peril!06/26/00: The water torture of American resolve06/21/00: The happy hangman is a busy hangman06/19/00: Dick Gephardt finds a Dixie dreamboat06/14/00: Taking a byte out of innovation06/12/00: 'Go away, little boy, you're bothering us' 06/07/00: When a little envy is painful to watch06/05/00: Fire and thunder, bubble and squeak05/31/00: South of the border, politics is pepper05/26/00: Running out of luck with home folks05/24/00: The heart says no, but the head says yes05/22/00: A fine opportunity to set an example 05/17/00: The Sunday school for Republicans 05/15/00: Hillary's surrogate for telling tall tales05/10/00: Listening to the voice of an authentic man05/08/00: First a lot of bluster, then the retreat05/02/00: Good news for Rudy, bad news for Hillary 04/28/00: The long goodbye to Elian's boyhood 04/25/00: Spooked by Castro, Bubba blinks 04/14/00: One flag down and two memorials to go 04/11/00: Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno04/07/00: Here's the good word (and it's in English)04/04/00: When bureaucrats mock the courts03/28/00: How Hollywood sets the virtual table03/24/00: Dissing a president can ruin a whole day03/20/00: When shame begets the painful insult03/14/00: The risky business of making an apology 03/10/00: The pouters bugging a weary John McCain03/07/00: When all good things (sob) come to an end